Is there a library in Blender 2.76?
There are a few addons 1 2 3 and external solutions for this around, but the truth is in recent versions Blender's native builtin  tools have improved considerably in the area of asset management.

You have always been able to link (remotely references data) or append (import from other file) data from any other Blender file into the current one by going to File > Link or File > Append.

You can do this for most data like models, groups, materials, lighting and animation.

In recent versions asset management got considerably improved by making the file browser able to display Blender image thumbnails even for Blender internal data, and making Blender able to generate per data-block thumbnails.

Just go to File > Data Previews > Batch-Generate Previews and make sure your file browser is set to display thumbnails.